Come and See -October 20, 2024

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

I was thinking as I was preparing this message, trying to figure out an introduction

to it, what could I share?

We've been talking about giving people hope, and we've been talking about the

hope initiative and encouragement to be great commissioned Christians,

not just to talk about, well, we love to get people saved, but to take a step in doing that.

To take a step first in prayer, to take another step in inviting others and

sending encouraging notes to people, and then another step would be inviting

them to church and helping them to meet Jesus.

And I thought about the very first Nazarene church that I ever went to, ever became a part of.

And it was about 24 years ago when I first came to the Church of the Nazarene.

I didn't grow up in the Church of the Nazarene. I've always been pretty much

in the same theological neighborhood, so to speak.

But the very first Nazarene church I ever became a part of was L'Amour Church

of the Nazarene in L'Amour, California.

And I'll never forget my introduction to y'all called Nazarenes.

Well, it was something else.

Pastor Rod was not your typical pastor that you would think of.

Pastor Rod really didn't learn to read or write until he became a Christian.

And his conversion was one of those from a TV preacher. Can you believe it? That actually works.

They said, reach your hand out if you want to accept Christ.

He did, and he was sincere in his conversion. found a local church where they

discipled him, later went through the course of study, became a Nazarene preacher.

And like your former pastor here, our friend Pastor Chuck, he's been in his

church over 30-something years.

Praise be to God. Like Pastor Chuck, he's a rare breed of pastor.

And we praise God for guys like that.

But my introduction to this church wasn't just about their pastor.

It was what God was doing when we came to that church. I'll never forget it.

Christmas time came around, right? I know when Christmas time's coming here,

we celebrate Advent and the buildup to celebrating the birth of Christ.

And that's awesome and that's fun and that's what we do.

We didn't really do the Advent thing there. But guess what? We just kept inviting

people. Hey, would you like to come to church?

Now, you've got to understand the church building wasn't like this.

It's not like their current facility now.

It was maybe just these two rows here, and there were three services that we held.

An early service, kind of a second early service, and then a normal service,

if you will, 11 o'clock service.

But each service was packed in this little corner church with no parking,

and we witnessed God do some amazing things.

We talked about a word, someone needing some hope, where there were drug addicts

that needed hope, and they found the answer to overcoming that addiction,

the freedom from that addiction in Jesus Christ.

We saw people that were struggling in their marriages, that were ready just

to cash it all in and go their separate ways.

We saw God restore their marriage, their relationship together.

We saw over and over again people being delivered from alcohol or from drugs,

from emotional difficulties, from mental illnesses.

God had moved in a major way. It was incredible.

It continued like that. As a matter of fact, just to kind of give you an idea

of what God was doing at this time, there are over 50 people that came to Jesus Christ in faith.

They were saved during the Christmas time that we had, the two or three weeks there.

50 people that came to know Jesus in that short time.

You talk about knowing you're at the right church.

You talk about knowing that you've got a big job as a youth and associate pastor,

all these people getting saved, all these families coming in.

Boy, the excitement that was there. people received the hope of Jesus,

and it transformed the trajectory of some of their lives, really of all their lives.

I share this story with you because I was privileged to be there for six years.

And in that six years, we had the opportunity. I wrote down the statistics,

so I wouldn't forget it. We brought in 180 members of,

But we did that because we baptized over 156 people. Isn't that amazing?

Just in that short amount of time. I couldn't believe it when I looked back. I knew there was a lot.

I can't tell you how many people came to know Jesus during that time.

We really didn't record that stat for some reason. You think that would be an important one, right?

But we did see the church grow in size, and God did a wonderful work.

It all goes back to what I'm going to talk about this morning.

And what I want to talk about this morning is just come and see.

When you have something exciting happening, you want people to come and see.

You know, anytime my son Noah is doing something awesome, he's watching a good

football game or a NASCAR race or he's playing a video game,

I always hear him from the back. Hey, Dad, come here.

I said, no, I just sat down. I don't want to go there. I just got comfortable.

Just explain it to me. no dad you gotta see

it oh come on Noah so I get up and walk down there and say dad look at this

cool thing I made and it was cool but did I have to get up out of my chair and

go all the way back to his room in order to see it well the fact is yeah I did

the fact is he was just too excited.

On what he had created or or the great play that was made a lot of times he

doesn't know I'm watching the same game in the living room that he sees.

So yeah, yeah, I know Texas lost. All right.

Or yeah, I know Fresno did this or Boise did that.

But it's important. And why is it important? Why should I care?

Because I have a relationship with my son.

Because he is my son. And I want you to know that all those 50 people that came

to Jesus way back 24 years ago in Lemoore, California,

They came to Jesus because someone else who knew Jesus knew them and had a relationship with them.

It wasn't just like they were wandering around LaMora, California. Oh, there's a church.

And they just wandered and stumbled through the door.

It was because they had a personal invitation to come and see.

Come and see what God is doing. Come and see.

And in seeing, you'll see a person that was broken, that was beat up, that was in addiction.

You'll see how God is transformed and transforming their lives folks I know

we have similar testimonies here about how God takes a broken beat up person

he saves their soul but doesn't leave them just save them he transforms who they are in that moment.

When we think about it, it's a great picture of this verse, or this passage,

excuse me, that I want to share with you from John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

John chapter 1 is, man, it's a great introduction to the gospel.

John 1 · chapter mention

If you ever want, and you're witnessing to somebody, and you want them,

and they're really exploring about who Jesus is, turn them to John,

the gospel of John. Say, hey, just read this. Read through it.

You're going to find some great stuff, and this is some of the great stuff that you can find.

We had John the Baptizer. I say it, John the baptizer, just so you know,

because we're a Nazarene church, okay?

John was the Baptist. Jesus is the Nazarene, just so you are clear about that.

I grew up Baptist, came to find Jesus. No, I'm Nazarene now.

When we think about this, here's John the baptizer, John the Baptist,

if you will. He's out there baptizing, and then he sees Jesus.

In verse 29, and I'll read our passage here in just a minute,

John says, hey, look, it's the Lamb of God.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now, John had some followers that were with him, some disciples that were with him.

And so we'll jump into the passage this morning for John 1, verse 35.

John 1:35

Hear the word of the Lord this morning.

The scripture says, the next day, John the baptizer was there again with two of his disciples.

When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, look, the Lamb of God.

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.

Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, what do you want?

They said, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?

Come, Jesus replied, and you will see. So when they went and saw where he was

staying, they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard that John had said

and who had followed Jesus.

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him,

we have found the Messiah, that is the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, son of John. You will be called

Cephas, which translated as Peter.

The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip,

he said to him, follow me.

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, were from the town of Bethsaida.

Philip found Nathanael and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about

in the law, and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? Nathanael asked.

Come and see, said Philip. When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching,

he said to him, Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.

How do you know me, Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.

Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.

May God bless the reading of his word to your life today. You can be seated.

We think about the ripple effect of these relationships here,

and it's just astounding to me.

There was John the baptizer out in the wilderness saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And people began to be baptized for repentance to show that they had turned

away from their old life, from their old life of sin, the old life that they

lived, and they wanted a fresh new start to follow the Messiah that was going to come.

And in doing so all these followers just began to hang out with John.

Well John knew he wasn't the Messiah but when his cousin Jesus came on the scene

John quickly said behold here is the Lamb of God this is the one that takes

away the sin of the world and as a result of that as we we see it unfold here

we see there's two disciples.

I want to get one of them out of the way really quickly because he's not really named.

And a lot of theologians, including a practical theologian such as myself,

really believes that one of the two disciples was John, of whom is writing this gospel.

John was kind of like one of those humble guys. You don't talk about yourself.

And so he kind of doesn't talk about himself.

Sometimes he'll show himself in the gospel of John as the one whom Jesus loves.

I guess that's humble. I don't know.

It's kind of like saying, I'm the favorite child, you know, kind of thing.

I don't know that John meant that, but I really believe that John,

not John the baptizer, but John the beloved, so to say, is the one of the two

disciples that were there.

And we know from the other gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

the synoptic gospels, that, and you can see it written in your bulletin there, the passage,

Matthew 4, 21 and 22, that John goes and he gets his brother James.

These were two great guys, John and James.

I love it because they're known affectionately as the Sons of Thunder.

Man, you talk about some WWF kind of guys, right? I guess it's WWE now.

Anyway, talk about professional wrestlers that you want to cheer for, the Sons of Thunder.

And they must have had some kind of reputation. That's pretty cool.

But here, John, who was following John, the baptizer, he then,

after he discovers Jesus, he goes and tells his brother James all about it.

We continue to go on now, and the ones that are in our text this morning,

see, Andrew was also with John, the baptizer, and with John, the beloved.

And here, Andrew says, oh, we found Jesus.

We have found the Messiah. They go and they hang out with Jesus for a bit.

And after being with Christ, they can't help but go and get others.

Jesus said, come, follow me and see. Come and see.

Well, that was contagious because Andrew then went to his brother,

Simon, who Jesus sees and says, no, you're Cephas. You're Peter. You're the rock.

Andrew says, we found the Messiah. He goes to his brother, come and follow me. Well, what happens?

He makes this great confession later on, as we see in Matthew,

when Jesus is with him and says, who do people say that I am?

And Peter, Simon Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

Jesus goes on to say that flesh and blood has not been revealed to you.

And on this rock, I will build my church. The gates of Hades will not overcome it.

You see these relationships that are going on here? Started out with John the

baptizer, someone that wasn't afraid to preach repentance to a culture that needed to repent.

Was not afraid to preach the kingdom of God is coming and you need to turn away and turn toward God.

I think those messages are relevant today, wouldn't you say?

Well, we have John and James, and we have Andrew and Peter, but there's someone

else in the mix that Jesus comes to and says to follow me, and his name is Philip.

Now, Philip, he knew Andrew, I believe, and he knew Peter because they are from the same town.

It was a small town, kind of like the small towns we live in around here.

Everybody knows everybody's business, right?

If not, you can go on the classifieds for your city and see what's going on in town.

And so there's no doubt in my mind that Philip knew Simon and that Philip knew Andrew.

And they go to Philip. Jesus calls him. He follows.

And then Philip has the idea, I've got a brother who really needs to hear about this.

And so he goes to him and he says, verses 43 to 49, hey, we found the Messiah,

the one wrote about in the law.

And I love this exchange between Nathanael, who's also called Bartholomew, and the other gospels.

This exchange, well, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

He was kind of one of those guys that was, where he was from in Galilee up there,

was kind of a neighboring town, neighboring region there for Nazareth.

And so there's kind of maybe some prejudice there.

I won't say in relation to where we're at because we're from different areas,

but we might have some prejudice toward people once we hear where they're from.

Like I said, I'm not going to mention anything. You could fill in the blanks.

But you get the idea that here, Philip goes to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel's like, well, that's kind of where we're from.

Can anything good come from around there, especially for spiritual things?

I mean, we know the hometown. We know the gossip. We know everything that goes on around there.

But yet when he encounters Jesus, a transformational encounter,

when Jesus said, hey, I saw you before.

Here is a true one of Israel.

Well, it blew Nathanael's mind.

Nathanael ends up with this great confession. Rabbi, you are the Son of God.

You are the King of Israel.

Each time one of these men met Jesus, there was a transformation that took place.

And that transformation resulted in a confession, a great confession about who

Jesus is every single time.

It's astounding to me, the relationships that go on here.

When you find something that's true, you want to share it with others.

When you find something that's real and that's meaningful, you can't help but

wish to share that with others around you, especially those that you love.

Hey, if I knew someone was giving out $100 bills for free, I'd be wanting to

tell as many people as I can about it.

$100, well, it might not go as far as it used to go, but it's still useful to have.

Not the funny money kind of stuff. I mean, the real $100.

If we were all sick with something and we found out there is a cure,

a true cure, we'd be sharing that with as many people as we could find.

Definitely starting with our own families, but we couldn't keep that to ourselves.

We couldn't hoard that and say, well, I know, but you don't.

No, we want everyone to know.

When we find something good, here, John the Beloved found something good.

He had to share it with James.

Andrew found something good. He had to share it with his brother, Simon.

Philip found something great, and he couldn't help but share it with Nathaniel Bartholomew.

See, the ripple effect of relationship. What I've just described to you here

from this passage is half of the disciples that Jesus called to follow him.

There's six of them right there.

Folks, I want you to know, as a believer in Jesus Christ, you may not understand

what kind of ripple effect your relationships have.

You might not understand that by volunteering at one of the events that we have,

by just being a Christian at work where you're at, how that might affect someone

that doesn't know Jesus yet. You might not realize.

That when someone knows that you go to Mountain View Church of the Nazarene,

whether you're just here as a guest or whether you're a regular attender,

that it puts a thought in their mind about our church from who you are and for what you do.

And the incredible thing is, when we think about the relationships that we have,

the gospel flows through those relationships, the good news of Jesus.

As a matter of fact, there's a guy I admire. His name is Dr.

Elmer Towns. He's a big church growth guy several, several years ago.

And he said this. He talked about this thing called the principle of bonding.

And he said relationships are the glue that bonds people to the church.

Relationships. Knowing someone else. Someone once said, hey,

I don't care if you have a friendly church, but are there people in the church

that I can be friends with?

Well, that's a profound statement.

Hey, we always want to be a friendly church, right? When someone walks in the

door, we want to make sure that they are seen and that they are known as people,

that they are valued and their presence here is important.

But do you have a seat left at your dinner table for them?

Do you have a place in line for them to join you for something you're going to go do?

People want to know that they've got friends, especially in this lonely world.

Hey, it's one thing to come in here and be overwhelmed by all of us and our

greeting time, which isn't long enough in my opinion, but that's okay.

I'm used to being able to greet everyone in the whole church during our five-minute greeting song.

So, you know, I just got to take it section by section by section and don't

move around on me. I might lose you in that.

But we want to have a warm, welcoming church, but do we have room in our lives for people?

See, that's the kind of relationship we're talking about.

That's the kind of friendship we're talking about.

See, the fewer relationships a person has in a church, the more apt a person's

going to leave. They're not going to stick around.

Why would you stick around if you ain't got no friends?

There's other places where you could have friends. Some of them may be not so holy.

Could think of an 80s TV show where everyone knew their name.

They were always glad you came.

You're welcome. That song is sticking your head all day.

But you see, the more relationships a person has in a church,

the greater the potential for that person to stay around, but more than that, to participate.

Why do you have friends? Well, you want to go and do stuff with them,

right? You just don't want to say, well, I've got this great list right here,

man. Look at all these friends I have.

Oh, they're listed. I got a lot of friends. What do you do with them?

Well, you know, I haven't done anything with them. Are they really you're friends

then you know you have friends because you want to do things together.

The more friends you have, the more encounters, the more engagement that you

have with one another, the more joy and the more meaning and the more purpose

that it brings to your life.

And that's a key point. Why do pastors, Sunday school teachers,

church people want you to be here every Sunday?

We want you to be here every Sunday because we love getting to know you,

but we also want to build on those relationships so we can go outside these

walls and go do stuff together, live in relationship with one another.

We better get used to it because we've got a whole eternity of doing that.

If we truly believe what our scripture says, you know, on average,

and this again comes from Dr.

Elmer Towns, it takes seven touches and three hearings for someone to come to

Christ. We're talking about in a relationship.

Now I'm not talking about going up and high-fiving and giving a handshake,

that kind of touch. That's important.

But really, touches are those personal contacts.

When we're able to meet someone for the first time and there is a hug or a handshake

and we're getting to know them, there's a touch there.

When you see them in the grocery store and we say, hey, I saw you on Sunday,

thanks for coming to see us.

And when we begin, as we do in relationships, to build on what's already been

there, on average, it takes seven of those touches for someone to begin to take

an interest not only in a relationship with you, but a relationship with Jesus.

And it takes at least three hearings, three times in which the gospel message

is shared. And these are just averages, right?

Some people we know, maybe some in here, it took 20 hearings before you finally

said, okay, Jesus, I get the message.

For some, it's just one. They're ready.

Jesus said, behold, the fields are widened to harvest. Pray for the Lord to

harvest, to send out workers.

The harvest is now. And are we aware that, We need to be reaching out as much

as we can Someone said, yeah, Mike, but I'm like a Lego I've only got so many places to connect.

I said, yeah, you know, if you're just a little one block that you step on in

the middle of the night that your kids leave out, that's very painful.

But I've noticed with Legos, some of them have two connections,

some of them have four, five, six, eight.

And then there's a big green mat that you set out and you could stick all the Legos on.

So you have as many connections as you want to have, I think.

You know, the neat thing about this is it all starts with an invitation.

Come and see. Hey, come and see.

Jesus and his invitation to come and see, it transformed the lives of these

six that we just mentioned today.

A transformation, a dedication of the disciples' invitation to come and see

radically changed lives as we look through the New Testament and see how the

church spread through the known world.

But what about your invitation to come and see? Who are you inviting to come

and see? I believe it starts in our homes.

I believe it starts with each one of us saying, who do I need to reach out to?

Who in your life could you not stand to live without for all eternity?

I'm not saying we should be comfortable living without anyone throughout all

eternity, but who in your life that you know needs Jesus?

Who in your life maybe has Jesus, but they just need a family to connect with?

Folks, when we look around and we see all the loneliness in our communities,

when we see all the people that they're just sitting at home this morning,

not even watching on a screen somewhere, a church service,

to feel what we feel when we're together, to know that we're not alone when we're here.

Boy, it's important that we continue to invite people. Come and see.

Come and see. When they come and see, they hear testimony of what God is doing and how God is moving.

You know, the easiest thing that I want to invite is, You got this in your bulletin this morning.

Hey, you already know about it. So why don't you take this and share it with one of your neighbors?

Take it and share it when you go grocery shopping. Hey, I see you're in the

chili aisle. You like chili? Well, hey, I got a deal for you. Free chili.

I'm just giving you a hint here. So I expect someone to be stationed.

No, Albertsons, M&W. I mean, here we go.

An invitation is all is come and see. And I like next week, come and taste.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. So folks, I say folks a lot.

I don't know why. It's one of those habits.

People of God, beloved that you are, let's go out this week and let's invite.

Invite people not just to come to church, but invite people to come into our

lives to see what Jesus can do with them.

Invite them to come to Christ.

I know next week is going to be an important Sunday, because we are having the fall celebration.

But I'm also going to share the good news of Jesus, to share the gospel.

So if you know someone this next week who has been exploring Jesus,

who is thinking about, yeah, I really need to commit, invite him to come next

week to hear the good news of Jesus.

I hope they hear it every week, but specifically next week.

And if you've already invited some, someone be praying for them.

If you have no one to invite yet, pray that God will put someone in your path

that you can just say, hey, come and see with me.

And all these things, we want the Lord to be glorified.

I think we're going to close with a song this morning. And as the praise team

comes up, let's put our hearts together in prayer and do pray for next Sunday.

God, thank you for the opportunity to share together this morning in your word.

And Lord, may we all be inspired to tell others to come and see,

to go out and invite, and Lord, to be praying for these people.

Lord, the five people that you put on our heart, but Lord, even more than that,

those in our world who do not have relationship with you, God,

through Jesus, that if they were to die today would be dead in their sin and

trespasses and separated from you for all eternity.

Lord, that's our driving love for them, is that that not happen.

And so, Lord, help us as we go out this week and invite others,

that your house will be filled next week, but more than that,

that everyone will hear the good news of Jesus Christ, and that many will come

to know who you are, God, through Jesus.

It's in the name of Jesus Christ that we do pray this this morning. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outlined from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.